Atukwei Okai: Kperterkple Serenade (excerpt)

when karl marx grabbed his bibliography
and ballpen and pocketed his toothbrush
and his shaving stick

he went and bought a ticket to london

when ghandi girded his loin cloth, it
was london he had in mind.
when lenin fled his beloved motherland
his final haven-crashpad was london.

but america

your address book too has memories that yield

the names

of von braun and charles dickens and
marcus garvey and amerigo vespucci and
christopher columbus who boarded the wrong bus
and maxim gorky and mayakovsky and uncle
einstein and mr. carnegie and rockefeller

even your ports

recalling

report how
the mayflower moved in to deflower at night
the virgin land
of the red indians –